PRESIDENT BUSH: Bienvenidos a mi amigo, the President of the
Dominican Republic. I'm proud to be with a strong leader who is focused
on reform and rule of law and prosperity.

The President informed me that the economy of the Dominican
Republic grew by 9 percent last year. And I want to congratulate you,
Mr. President.

We talked about how to continue economic growth and vitality. It's
in the interests of the United States that the Dominican Republic have a
strong economy. We talked about the need for us to help with the
multilateral institutions, to -- for them to work with this government
to help with cash flows and cash demands so that this economy can
continue its growth and strength.

We talked DR-CAFTA, and how important this piece of legislation is
to the people of the Dominican Republic and to the people of the United
States. And I assured the President that we will implement DR-CAFTA as
quickly as possible, as soon as possible. And to that end, I have my
trade minister, Ambassador Susan Schwab, here to make sure that we both
heard the message of the President, that this was a very important piece
of legislation and that we have committed -- our government has
committed to working with you, Mr. President, to get this done as
quickly as possible.

Y por fin, we talked about the need for us to work closely on drug
trafficking. The United States of America must continue to work to
diminish the demand for drugs, and we are. As well, we want to work
with our partners in the hemisphere, particularly the Dominican
Republic, to interdict the drugs and to help these countries be able to
avoid and fight off the scourge of drugs, because there is a direct
correlation between drugs and crime, and the more we can cut down on
drug use and drug trafficking and drug supplies, the easier it will be
for respective countries to protect their people.

Mr. President, I appreciate very much your presence here. I thank
you for your leadership in the hemisphere. I appreciate the advice you
have given me on how we can work together to make sure our own
neighborhood is secure and peaceful and hopeful. Welcome.

PRESIDENT FERNANDEZ: (As translated.) I thank you very much, Mr.
President. It's a pleasure to be here. And I want to thank President
Bush for the warm welcome that he has given me, along with my
delegation, here to the Oval Office of the White House.

As the President indicated, we have touched on a number of issues
of mutual interest to our two countries. First of all, DR-CAFTA; its
implementation, hopefully, will take place very soon. We are now in the
final phase. This is a bill now before our own congress in the
Dominican Republic. We are dealing with some minor legal amendments,
and our two teams have been working very hard to obtain a speedy
implementation of DR-CAFTA. President Bush and we have agreed to the
need to accelerate this process to benefit both our countries.

Second, as President Bush indicated, we have also touched on the
issues of disbursements by multilateral institutions. These are
extremely important in order to help with the progress of countries like
the Dominican Republic to establish confidence, to maintain the
confidence in our countries, and also to help us sustain ability of our
economies.

The Dominican Republic has agreements with these multilateral
institutions, and we hope that they will be honored soon with regard to
these disbursements. The sooner they are complied with the better it
will be for us.

And third, of course, we have touched on a number of issues such as
the issue of drug trafficking, as President Bush mentioned, the issue of
crime, the issue of the good relations that we have had for so many
years between the United States and the Dominican Republic, the issue of
good governance, the issue of respect for human rights, and a number of
other things.